NASA has awarded Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and his private rocket firm a $3.4 billion contract to take astronauts back to the moon, the US space agency’s exploration chief Jim Free said Friday.
Bezos’ Blue Origin is the second company to score a lunar mission project as part of NASA’s Artemis program, following Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, which won $3 billion in 2021 to put humans back on the moon for the first time since 1972.
According to Blue Origin’s lunar lander head John Couluris, Blue Origin privately contributed ‘well north’ of the contract’s $3.4 billion payout.
Bezos’ lunar lander (mock-up pictured) will be built in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, the spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic
Bezos announced the mission with cheeky implications that he intends to build a lunar base
Couluris’ official title at Blue Origin for the past three years reads ‘Vice President for Advanced Development Programs – Lunar Permanence’ — and his boss made reference to exactly those plans for ‘permanence’ when announcing the deal.
‘We are going to the Moon!’ Bezos captioned is on Instagram post depicting a mock-up of his proposed Blue Origin lunar lander, ‘this time to stay.’
Bezos’ firm has been vague on details regarding its moon lander proposal, aside from namechecking its corporate partners: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, the spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic.
Musk’s NASA Artemis missions, using SpaceX’s Starship system, are planned for later this decade, with Bezos’ Blue Origin missions coming next.
